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Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoChris Russell | DISPATCHMike Treneff works to keep Columbus’ roadways flowing freely. The city will replace Treneff’s 1970s equipment with some giving him and his co-workers control over every traffic signal by 2018.

When the wall of monitors in Columbus’ traffic-management center went black, Mike Treneff got a
replacement monitor — from his basement.

He lugged his old, cathode-ray-tube TV to the room at 109 N. Front St. where city employees
watch traffic monitors, toggle joysticks and punch buttons to keep Columbus traffic moving.

Treneff is the man behind the curtain — at least one of them — who has the power to alter the
city’s traffic signals.While commuters grumble about traffic jams, Treneff has a bird’s-eye view of
the city’s most-congested corridors and can adjust the timing of signals to relieves backups. But
his tools are old, and traffic isn’t getting any lighter.

That’s why the city is spending $38.1 million to replace a system installed in the 1970s with
one that will give Treneff and his colleagues control over every signal in the city by 2018.

The new system will wrap all signals into a single network. More data will funnel to new
software in the traffic-management center, where Treneff and others can decide how to untie traffic
snarls.

The upgrades are to allow the city to respond more quickly to problem areas and speed up travel
throughout Columbus and even in its suburbs.

“It definitely will make the commute smoother,” said Patti Austin, a city planning and
operations administrator.

Columbus’ current system works like this: During rush hours, technicians keep tabs on areas that
often back up by flipping between traffic cameras spread throughout the city. When a highway is
overrun, traffic can back up on a ramp and along a city corridor, such as Downtown.When that
happens, the timing of red and green lights can be adjusted to flush traffic.

“Traffic is kind of like water,” Austin said. “If you clog up one drain, it’s going to overflow
into other places.”

Coaxial cable connects 625 signals to the Downtown command center. But about 400 additional
signals remain on their own system or aren’t connected to other signals and cannot be controlled
remotely.

That will soon change. Nearly 500 miles of fiber-optic cable will run to most traffic signals,
and others will sync wirelessly with the new system. The number of cameras posted around the city
will triple to 150, from 50.

And there will no longer be a need for Treneff’s television. Six, 60-inch monitors that will
display camera feeds and other data will go up in the new command center at 1881 E. 25th Ave., on
the city’s North Side.

Upgraded software will give the city power to move traffic along during huge events such as Red,
White & Boom and Ohio State University football games, Austin said.

“We’re pretty limited in what we can do certain times of day,” said project manager Ryan Bollo. “
This new software will be able to do whole corridors and have pre-timed systems we can do any time
of day.”

Columbus also will have more capacity to work with its suburbs and Franklin County. Its new
system will be “open source,” allowing others to tap into it.

Central Ohio’s traffic-signal infrastructure is similar to other areas across the country, said
Hani Mahmassani, an engineering professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

“What you find in most cities today is that you have fragmented systems,” he said. “Signal
control has a 5 to

10 percent potential improvement that is just not being tapped.”

Columbus is paying $12.8 million to design the system, and the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning
Commission is dedicating more than $25 million in federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality
Funds for construction.